Talk:Boudicca's Daughters
The article's intro talks about historical figures, uses the historical template, etc. The RB section talks entirely about fictional characters: fictional characters within RB. Shakespeare, Marlowe, de Vega et al are also fictional characters when you read RB, but we have many hundreds of articles on historical figures who appear as fictional characters in historical fiction. There's a tried-and-true format at work there. Applying this same formula to a play-within-a-play situation feels inappropriate. Turtle Fan (talk) 05:58, August 31, 2018 (UTC) :Boud's daughters are historical figures, even though hardly anything is known about them.JonathanMarkoff (talk) 08:13, August 31, 2018 (UTC) ::::And what, pray tell, does that have to do with the issue I raised? Turtle Fan (talk) 23:09, August 31, 2018 (UTC) ::I agreeing with Jonathan, for no other reason than we have articles on all of the historical figures appearing in the play, might as well have the daughters. Now, if we want to review our decision to have articles and on Boudicca of the Iceni, Caratacus, et. al., this might be the time to have that conversation. TR (talk) 15:08, August 31, 2018 (UTC) :::The RB section of Boudicca's article talks about how the real-life character was the inspiration for the play. This article skips a level of reality and goes directly from historical figure to character in the play-within-a-play (meaning the two sections are on entirely different topics). Caratacus sort of veers back and forth between the two. :::The current state of affairs is a mess and must be standardized one way or another. I would prefer to impose the way we do Boudicca as the standard, and move all references to the fictional characters to the article on the play. Turtle Fan (talk) 23:09, August 31, 2018 (UTC) ::::Okay, I see what you mean. We would then have Boudicca as a posthumous character given her inspiration. Caratacus is marginal but we might keep him with a reworking of the RB sub-section. The daughters go back to being "Two daughters, names unknown" in the historical part of Boudicca's template and the two fictitious names in the RB part as reverences to the List of Boudicca Characters (Ruled Britannia) sub-sections. Incidentally, I just restored the two sub-sections for the daughters in the list but haven't adjusted anything else. ::::We also have two Roman historical characters: Poenius Postumus and Gaius Suetonius Paulinus. Poenius Postumus is, according to the article, known only from the Annals of Tacitus on the rebellion and the RB sub-section talks about the play's character. Setonius has more historical info than just that from the Annals but, again, the RB sub-section is about the character in the play. Thoughts? ML4E (talk) 16:35, September 1, 2018 (UTC) :::::That's exactly what I'm proposing. When Shakespeare, Marlowe, Burleigh and the gang discuss Boudicca et al in the context of historical research or something, they're meant to be talking about the real figures. When they talk about the characters who appear on the stage, they're now talking about something else. :::::It's not unlike how the Shakespeare, Marlowe, Burleigh and the gang of RB are not the same people as the Shakespeare, Marlowe, Burleigh and the gang of actual history. The difference is, within the universe of RB, those characters aren't aware that they're not real. They are aware Boudicca and Paulinus and the rest aren't real (or rather, of the difference between the real people and the characters for whom Shakespeare is writing dialogue). Our standard of in-universe writing styles demand we respect that distinction, and what ML4E says is exactly what that should look like. Turtle Fan (talk) 04:17, September 2, 2018 (UTC) :::::::Ok, I see the proposal. Let's do it. TR (talk) 04:20, September 2, 2018 (UTC) ::I was somewhat leery about this article but didn't raise it since the consistency with other historical figures in the play was at the back of my mind. I can go either way on the wider discussion of whether this should be the case for the other historicals. My main beef, in the past, was treating the fictionalized stage figures as real people for the purposes of categorization. Since that has been eliminated, as I say, I can take it or leave it. ML4E (talk) 19:05, August 31, 2018 (UTC)